Patients not informed of surgical risks in Turkey
Department of Health and Social Care received 2 coroners' reports about this hazard between 13 Sept 2023 and 10 Feb 2025.
They came from 2 different coroners in 2 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 1 time after the first warning.
A published response was found for 1 of the 1 earlier reports, stating 1 specific action.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“I am concerned that patients travelling to Turkey for this procedure are not being made aware of the risks and the high mortality rate associated with this surgery”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Department of Health and Social Care responded, stating 1 specific action.Response (PDF) ↗
“My officials will also be visiting Türkiye shortly to meet with their counterparts. The intention is to discuss the regulatory framework, and the protections that are in place for UK nationals, and to identify concrete areas where the UK and Turkish authorities should work together to reduce the risks to patients in the future.”
Stated timescale: shortly
Web search (Tavily): No evidence found either way
Turkey publishes the Regulation on the Provision of Distance Health Services and the Regulation on the Cascading of Health Service Providers ↗- 1 year 5 months later
Raised again · 1st time
Anne Towlson↗
10 Feb 2025 · Isobel Thistlethwaite · Rutland and North Leicestershire
Identical hazardConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner“I am concerned about the fact that we have no evidence to confirm whether Mrs [name redacted] was made aware of the risks and mortality rates associated with any of the surgical procedures she underwent in Turkey.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:concernedmadeawarerisksmortalityassociated
Department of Health and Social Care responded.Response (PDF) ↗
- All reports to Department of Health and Social Care
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2023 → 2025Anne Towlson1 year 5 months after Melissa Kerr · different coronerIdentical hazardConfidence 0.90 · high
Identical hazardConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports highlight that patients undergoing surgery in Turkey are not being adequately informed of the risks and high mortality rates associated with the procedures.
Melissa Kerr · 13 Sept 2023
“I am concerned that patients travelling to Turkey for this procedure are not being made aware of the risks and the high mortality rate associated with this surgery”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Anne Towlson · 10 Feb 2025
“I am concerned about the fact that we have no evidence to confirm whether Mrs [name redacted] was made aware of the risks and mortality rates associated with any of the surgical procedures she underwent in Turkey.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“My officials will also be visiting Türkiye shortly to meet with their counterparts. The intention is to discuss the regulatory framework, and the protections that are in place for UK nationals, and to identify concrete areas where the UK and Turkish authorities should work together to reduce the risks to patients in the future.”
Stated action · timescale: shortly
“My officials will also be visiting Türkiye shortly to meet with their counterparts. The intention is to discuss the regulatory framework, and the protections that are in place for UK nationals, and to identify concrete areas where the UK and Turkish authorities should work together to reduce the risks to patients in the future.”
What happened next: No evidence found either way
The Department of Health and Social Care has not announced any planned visit to Türkiye.
“Turkey publishes the Regulation on the Provision of Distance Health Services and the Regulation on the Cascading of Health Service Providers”
“The Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health of 26 April 2025 repealed the former 2017 framework and introduced enhanced rules on authorisation, quality assurance, reporting, advertising, inspection and sanctions”
No evidence found does not mean the action did not happen.
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to Department of Health and Social Care at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 → 2025 | 0.88 | 0.30 | Identical · 0.90 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
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Other chains for Department of Health and Social Care
This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.